Citadelle de Carcassonne

The Citadelle de Carcassonne crowns a hilltop in southern France's Languedoc region, its fortifications begun by Roman settlers who established the colony of Julia Carsaco there around 100 BC, with the lower courses of its ramparts still identifiable as Gallo-Roman work by their bands of red brick and terracotta tile. The medieval Trencavel viscounts built substantially within these Roman walls, adding the Chateau Comtal and the Basilica of Saints Nazarius and Celsus, and by the thirteenth century the fortress also briefly served as a prison for the Catholic Inquisition. A concentric double circuit of walls studded with 52 towers and barbicans, designed to break any siege before it reached the inner defenses, survives as the citadel's defining plan. The fortress fell into such disrepair that French authorities ordered its demolition in 1849, a decision reversed only after local preservationists intervened; the architect Eugene Viollet-le-Duc then led a restoration beginning in 1853, re-roofing the towers and ramparts in a program his successors continued after his death in 1879. UNESCO inscribed the citadel as a World Heritage Site in 1997, citing the exceptional preservation and restoration of the medieval fortress.